I spent $258.50 on promotions to augment the Kindle Countdown. Along with these promos I ran AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) ads and posted notifications on Twitter, my Facebook personal account and author page, and sent out a few emails and PMs.

My results weren't stellar, but my sales rank improved from 220,992 to 2902, new readers and KindleUnlimited borrowers discovered my book, and I hope to get more word-of-mouth reader referrals and written reviews.

Many authors launch books at a steep discount, simultaneously running promo ads, hoping to achieve a more favorable sales rank and heightened visibility. As a new author with no prior books to testify to my competence, I took a different approach. I priced my 414-page fantasy novel at $3.99 and did a soft launch, only notifying Advance Reader Copy reviewers that the book was "live." A few days later, when I a had a handful of reviews, I asked Amazon to send the "now available" email to people who had nominated my book for Kindle Scout, and I posted notifications on Facebook and Twitter. My theory was that readers would be more likely to take a chance on an unknown author's work if they could read a few positive reviews. During my first thirty days I accumulated additional reviews, and at the end of the month I scheduled a Kindle Countdown deal and booked a number of promos.

It's impossible to know whether this approach generated more sales and reviews than some other launch strategy, but I'm satisfied with the results. Before the Countdown deal I had very few also-boughts and minimal KENP. Now I have nineteen pages of also-boughts and I'm getting daily KENP. Hopefully, the boost in sales rank will produce ongoing benefits and my book will find a wider readership. In the meantime, I'm editing the second book in this series, Shadowglade, which should be available in Spring 2017.